NewVote Nevada is a 501(c)(4) grassroots organization with the mission to educate, empower, and inspire young Nevadans to improve their communities through the ballot box with year-round organizing on and off college campuses.

Founded in 2024, NewVote aims to make the Silver State the Golden Standard for youth voter participation nationwide.

Nevada’s Solution to Nevada’s Youth Vote Problem

Young Nevadans are a political powerhouse, making up close to a third of all registered voters in the Silver State. However in 2024 they voted seven points below their share of voter registration, marking the second consecutive cycle of declining youth voter turnout in NV. This has serious implications for Millennial and Gen-Z voters, swinging elections and leaving decisions about their futures up to the state’s oldest voters. The numbers are clear: what has been, hasn’t worked. Boom and bust organizing focused only on Nevadans on college campuses stunts our ability to build progress year over year, and misses over 90% of young voters.

For years “Youth Vote Organizing” has been synonymous with “Campus Organizing”. While campus work is vital to any Youth Vote movement, the reality is that there are ten times more young voters than there are enrolled college students in the entire state. Failure to invest in the challenge of organizing dispersed, non-student youth is a failure to attempt to reach over 90% of young Nevadans. NewVote is committed to changing that. NewVote will build a Nevada Youth Vote movement that actually gets Nevada’s Youth. We’ll work to meet young voters at the platforms, places, and milestones that make up young adult life - both on and off campus. Blending traditional ground game organizing with culturally relevant digital tools, we’ll build the infrastructure needed to make the Youth Vote Movement more effective, strategic, and inclusive than ever before.

Our 2024 Impact

  • 520,000 Texts

    Young Nevadans are busy, and with what seems like an endless number of priorities competing for their attention, keeping track of election information and deadlines can fall by the wayside.

    NewVote is proud to have served over 520,000 SMS messages to NSHE Students, and first time voters helping cut through the noise, and keep them informed on deadlines for critical election moments like voter registration, early vote, mail ballot returns, and more.

  • 10,000 Vote Plans

    The science is clear - voters who make a plan ahead of time are far more likely to actually make it to the polls than those who don’t. That’s why NewVote worked to make nearly 10,000 vote plans with NSHE students and first time voters to help them make it to the polls.

    This work made a difference: Young Nevadans who made a plan to vote with NewVote turned out at a rate 23% higher than those who didn’t.

  • 750 Voter Registration

    The reality is, you can’t vote if you’re not registered. Nevada’s DMV based automatic voter registration has made it easier than ever to register to vote, but despite this change many Young Nevadans still fall through the cracks.

    NewVote provided critical voter registration information to young Nevadans both online and on campus, registering 750 voters and serving over 5,000 visits to our voter registration information page.

  • 1 New Youth Vote Movement

    2024 represented NewVote Nevada’s first election cycle. From our founding in February to our first Election Day and beyond, we hit the ground running in year one to make a difference.

    NewVote is Nevada’s Youth Vote Organization, founded to help Nevada escape the boom and bust cycle that limits the success of our state’s youth vote organizing. In 2024 we laid a strong foundation to support our work for years to come. In ‘25 we’ll continue our work to grow Nevada’s Youth Vote Movement.

About NewVote’s Founder

Mark Riffenburg founded NewVote Nevada in 2024.  As NextGen America’s Nevada Field Director in 2018, and State Director in 2020, Mark helped build two of Nevada’s highest youth turnout elections in years, leading programs that have registered over ten thousand young Nevadans to vote.

In 2015, Mark moved to Nevada from Massachusetts to organize for Hillary Clinton in the Caucuses. Since then, he has worked with Organizing for Action, Defend Our Future, Reason to Believe PAC, and County Commissioner Justin Jones’ 2022 Campaign.

His work organizing the youth vote in Nevada has been covered in publications from the Nevada Independent to The Atlantic, and BBC.